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The John Batchelor Show

PREVIEW: ANT WALK: Conversation with colleague Charlie Pellegrino, author of "Last Train from Hiroshima," re the slowly dying survivors of the blasts who were seen to resemble an Ant Walk as they marched aimlessly out of the ruins to succumb within hours

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

Society & Culture, Arts, News, Books

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 17 September 2024

⏱️ 2 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

PREVIEW: ANT WALK: Conversation with colleague Charlie Pellegrino, author of "Last Train from Hiroshima," re the slowly dying survivors of the blasts who were seen to resemble an Ant Walk as they marched aimlessly out of the ruins to succumb within hours or days. More later.

1945 Hiroshima

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is John Batcheer. Another moment my colleague Charlie Pelagrino describes.

0:05.0

This is a vivid tale in his three volumes about Hiroshima Nagaisaki, which will be a motion picture sometime

0:12.0

in these next years by James Cameron.

0:15.0

Is the Ant Walk, so-called because people followed a line of people in front of them and behind they were followed by people who were numb with shock and worse.

0:27.6

And Charlie describes the Ant Walk and how it proceeded and how it ended.

0:33.0

gruesome stuff.

0:34.5

But this is the other side of the Oppenheimer story.

0:38.5

You look at the Trinity test from Oppenheimer's point of view.

0:43.0

This looks at the Trinity Test from inside that fireball,

0:46.0

what happened to the human beings of Japan.

0:49.0

The Ant Walk, Charlie Pelagrino, more of this tonight. The majority of them dehydrated, they were dehydrated by the blast itself.

0:58.6

Many of them had severe burns.

1:01.2

The majority of them had been burned on one side, and then the blast effects had their

1:09.7

skin hanging down along their backs like tattered bits of clothing.

1:16.2

They walked for as long,

1:18.4

some of them walked for as long as two days

1:22.4

and within these lines of people walking people were just constantly

1:26.6

dropping out of the line falling to the ground and dying.

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